"The Free World is an episodic chronicle, delivered in an understated style which can accommodate serious subtexts as well as ironical humour – all of which provokes comparisons with the Jewish literary heavyweights Saul Bellow and Mordecai Richler." The Independent on Sunday'sPeter Carty was impressed by David Bezmozgis's novel about a migration from Riga, in Latvia, to Canada. '"The characters are in a terrible state: nervy, poor, driven by the creeping sense that life may be no better in a new place," noted Melissa Katsoulis in the Times. "Yet there is a lust for life imbuing his prose – the jokes, the descriptions of faces and kisses and streets and laughter, the sprinkles of Italian, Yiddish and Latvian – making it wonderfully uplifting. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Bezmozgis is one of the most assured new Jewish writers of the century so far." The novel was also praised in the Daily Telegraph by Leo Robson, who felt that the "book's dominant mode is a kind of wry comedy, based on the sensibility of characters we get to know well rather than comic scenarios or pratfalls."

Reviews of David Lodge's biographical novel about HG Wells, A Man of Parts, followed a recognisable pattern. Claudia FitzHerbert in the Daily Telegraph argued that it is "both outrageously clunky and curiously engrossing . . . There are paragraphs on every page which could just as well appear in a work of non-fiction." The Spectator'sSam Leith felt that the "effect is of a book-length version of This Is Your Life . . . The story zips along engrossingly" but "the problem is that A Man of Parts is so like a biography . . . that it's sometimes hard to see what it does as a novel that greatly adds to that . . . where you do notice the writing, dismayingly, it's a bit potboilery." Lesley McDowell in the Independent on Sunday highlighted the "authorial voice which ranges from the formally biographical . . . to the novelistic . . . while also managing to be the voice of Wells's conscience and subjecting him to questions about his past behaviour and attitudes . . . As a technique, it's an interesting experiment and well suited to a subject who does have quite a bit of explaining to do."

Margaret Macmillan in the Spectator thought Jonathan Steinberg's Bismarck: A Life "excellent . . . It is a complicated story, in part because Bismarck himself manoeuvred so craftily and through such complex and interlocking levels, but Steinberg tells it well. He even manages to make sense of the notorious Schleswig-Holstein question, which is said to have driven people mad . . . Steinberg has done an excellent job of explaining the man himself and his long and momentous career." The Daily Telegraph's Miranda Seymour also hailed a "brilliant examination of one of the most influential politicians of the 19th century. Steinberg takes care to balance the darker side of Bismarck against the charm that magnetised his admirers. It's hard to resist descriptions of Bismarck as a student, a friendly red-haired giant who spoke fluent French and English, relished duelling, swilled beer and champagne, and enjoyed playing host to his pals." Michael Burleigh in the Sunday Times agreed that the book is "rich and readable" but pointed out some "shoddy" editing and felt that Steinberg "seems a little naive in imagining that Bismarck was not a gentleman as the English understand it".